Long-lived zone-boundary magnons in an antiferromagnet

Abstract Antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulators exhibit many desirable features for spintronic applications such as fast dynamics in the THz range and robustness to fluctuating external fields. However, large damping typically associated with THz magnons presents a serious challenge for THz magnonic app...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jeongheon Choe, David Lujan, Gaihua Ye, Cynthia Nnokwe, Bowen Ma, Jiaming He, Frank Y. Gao, T. Nathan Nunley, Aritz Leonardo, Mikel Arruabarrena, Andres Ayuela, Jianshi Zhou, Martin Rodriguez-Vega, Gregory A. Fiete, Rui He, Xiaoqin Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-07-01
Series:Nature Communications
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60287-2
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Summary:Abstract Antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulators exhibit many desirable features for spintronic applications such as fast dynamics in the THz range and robustness to fluctuating external fields. However, large damping typically associated with THz magnons presents a serious challenge for THz magnonic applications. Here, we report long-lived short-wavelength zone boundary magnons in the honeycomb AFM insulator CoTiO3, recently found to host topological magnons. We find that its zone-boundary THz magnons exhibit longer lifetimes than its zone-center magnons. This unusual momentum-dependent long magnon lifetime originates from several factors including the antiferromagnetic order, exchange anisotropy, a finite magnon gap, and magnon band dispersion. Our work suggests that magnon-magnon interaction may not be detrimental to magnon lifetimes and should be included in future searches for topological magnons.
ISSN:2041-1723